1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a disk drive that makes write and/or read of information signals to and/or from an optical disk, and more particularly to a slot-in type disk drive into or from which an optical disk can be directly introduced or ejected through a disk slot.
This application claims the priority of the Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-320303 filed on Sep. 11, 2003, the entirety of which is incorporated by reference herein.
2. Description of the Related Art
Well-known conventional optical disks include purely optical type disks such as a CD (compact disk) and DVD (digital versatile disk), and magneto-optical type disks such as a MD (Mini Disk). Also, a variety of disk drives are available for use with such types of optical disks, respectively.
The disk drives include different types. In one of the typical types, a disk is settable directly onto a turn table which will be exposed and accessed from outside with a lid or door provided on a device housing being opened. In another typical disk drive, a disk is settable onto a disk tray which is moved horizontally into or out of a device housing, and the disk is automatically settable in place onto an internal turn table with the disk tray being brought deeper into the device housing. In a still another typical type, a disk is settable directly onto a turn table provided on a disk tray. With these types of disk drives, however, it is necessary to open and close the lid or door, bring the disk tray into or out of the device body or place the disk onto the turn table.
In addition, there is known a so-called slot-in type disk drive into which a disk, once inserted through a disk slot formed at the front side of a device housing, is automatically settable on a turn table. In this disk drive, a disk introduced through the disk slot is caught between a pair of guide rollers located opposite to each other and which are rotated in opposite directions. Thus, the disk can be brought into place in the housing (disk loading) through the disk slot, and can also be brought out of the housing through the disk slot (disk ejection).
There have been demands for smaller, lighter and thinner structures of portable type electronic devices such as a notebook-sized personal computer or the like in which a disk drive of the above-mentioned type and thus for correspondingly smaller, lighter and thinner structures of such a disk drive.
In the above-mentioned slot-in type disk drive, however, since the pair of guide rollers is larger than the diameter of the disk, the width of the entire disk drive will be larger. Also, since the disk is caught between the pair of guide rollers, the thickness of the disk drive will be larger. Therefore, the conventional slot-in type disk drive cannot be designed more compact and thinner.
To solve the above problem, there has been proposed a slot-in type disk drive designed to load a disk by bringing, into place in a device housing, an optical disk inserted through a disk slot by means of a plurality of pivot arms pivotable in cooperation with each other in a plane parallel to the optical disk, and eject the disk by bringing the optical disk through the disk slot to outside the device housing (cf. Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Nos. 167209/1996 and 2003-16710, referred to herein as “patent document Nos. 1 and 2”, respectively).
The disk drive disclosed in the patent document No. 2 includes a base having a turn table surface on which a disk is to be placed. The base is elevated to place a disk brought in a device housing onto the turn table surface (disk chucking). In such a disk drive, however, it is possible that the disk will not be chucked appropriately onto the turn table in the disk chucking operation, and will have to be re-chucked.